Gerrit Verschuur

Gerrit L. Verschuur, PhD, born in 1937 in Cape Town, South Africa, is a naturalized American scientist who is best known for his work in radio astronomy. A pioneer in that field—he has 54 years of experience—he is also an author, inventor, and currently Chief Scientist to a packaging and printing company and is involved in the quality control of the manufacture of paper tickets for slot-machines, having helped start a company known as Slot-Tickets. He is currently adjunct professor of physics for the University of Memphis. Above all, he is a lifetime fan of the Manchester United FC (even in tough times, such as now!).

In 1992 Verschuur and his wife, Joan Schmelz, became residents of the City of Lakeland, northeast of Memphis. In 2001 Verschuur was elected, and served a four year term as Commissioner in city government. In 2007 and 2011 Verschuur was re-elected. He and Joan currently live in Arlington, VA, where she holds a rotator position at the NSF.

Verschuur has taught at the universities of Manchester, Rhodes University in South Africa, Colorado, Maryland, UCLA, and Berkeley. From 1973-79 he was Director of Fiske Planetarium at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

In his primary field of study Verschuur pioneered the measurement of the interstellar magnetic field using the 21-cm Zeeman effect technique.

He has published extensively: over 100 astronomy related research articles; 3 research articles in limnology (lake science); two encyclopeadia articles; 9 books; edited or co-wrote three text books. He is also co-inventor on a dozen patents, his favorites being on ways to read bar codes inside sealed envelopes.

He currently does highly controversial work involving the apparent association between WMAP and PLANCK data with nearby, galactic neutral hydrogen structure.